A gift from England: William Ames and his polemical discourse against Dutch Arminianism

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Hardman Moore, Susan

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Burton, Simon

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Yagi, Takayuki

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2019-07-25T11:01:08Z

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2019-07-25T11:01:08Z

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2019-07-10

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http://hdl.handle.net/1842/35863

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This thesis examines a series of polemical writings in Latin which William Ames
(1576-1633) produced against Arminianism during his life as an English exile in
the Dutch Republic. Through these writings, Ames quickly established himself
from being an obscure military chaplain to being a champion of Reformed
orthodoxy who ‘with his sharp pen plucks out [Remonstrant teaching] from the
root’ and ‘its filaments cuts to pieces’. This reputation led him to be appointed as
a theological advisor to the president of the Synod of Dort (1618-1619), and
subsequently to be nominated for a newly established chair of practical
theology at Leiden University. Indeed, Ames was perceived as ‘given by England’
as a precious gift, according to the Dutch Reformed theologian who compiled
Ames’s Latin works.
However, Ames’s significant Latin corpus remains largely unexplored by
modern scholarship, which tends to rely only on his major work, The Marrow of
Theology. This results both in lack of knowledge about where Ames’s specific
contributions to the Arminian controversy lie, and in the misconception that
Ames was somehow sympathetic toward Arminianism. Thus, this study seeks to
uncover where Ames’s theological contributions are in each of the central
theological issues of the Dutch Arminian controversy. It also seeks to provide
correctives to current readings of Ames’s theology by highlighting links between
his neglected polemical writings and relevant passages in his better-known
work, The Marrow of Theology. Apart from the Introduction, the chapters of this
thesis are structured according to the main theological issues: whether the act
of divine predestination is absolute (Chapter 2); whether Christ’s work of
redemption is particularly intended only for the elect (Chapter 3); whether the
nature of grace is irresistible (Chapter 4); whether perseverance of the saints is
total and final (Chapter 5). In the face of Remonstrant teaching which tended to compromise divine
sovereignty at the cost of human freedom, Ames made serious efforts to
maintain the supremacy of God in his works of predestination, redemption,
conversion, and perseverance, while at the same time establishing human
freedom. Through these efforts, Ames vigorously defended the Reformed
tradition against common charges. To do this, he appropriated various medieval
scholastic distinctions. Some of these distinctions were already established in
the Reformed tradition: even when supremacy of divine will in God’s work of
predestination is maintained, there is no contradiction within God as the
conditional nature of the revealed will derives from his hidden will; God is not
author of sin because he does not will it in the active sense but only in his
permissive sense. The use of other distinctions, such as those used for
explaining the compatibility between the irresistibility of grace and human
freedom, appear to have been pioneered in Reformed thought by Ames. In his
Latin polemical works against Arminianism, Ames not only defended his own
tradition but also effectively attacked his opponents. This included offering both
philosophical and theological critiques of the concept of middle knowledge, the
philosophical basis of the Remonstrant teaching of predestination based on
foreseen faith; and exposing a clear synergistic tendency hidden behind the
often ambiguously articulated theological statements of his opponents. In all of
this, Ames was not, as previous scholarship has argued, making a compromise
or softening Reformed thought by finding a needed corrective in Arminianism,
but rather steadfastly defended his own Reformed tradition against
Arminianism without being blind to new philosophical and exegetical
challenges. That was precisely why Ames could be regarded by contemporary
admirers as ‘a gift from England’.

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en

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The University of Edinburgh

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William Ames

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Puritan theology

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Dutch Republic

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Arminianism

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divine sovereignty

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human freedom

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Dutch Arminian controversy

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dc.title

A gift from England: William Ames and his polemical discourse against Dutch Arminianism